


at the crown of eternal sunlight

by novakid



Series: i'm so sorry [2]
Category: DCU, Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Emerald Twilight, Freeform, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Parallax - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24246916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novakid/pseuds/novakid
Summary: The death of the Corps. The birth of Parallax.There's no coming back from this.
Series: i'm so sorry [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616515
Kudos: 9





	at the crown of eternal sunlight

_I stood there in the sun  
_ _Waiting for days  
_ _Just to be sure  
_ _I never slept  
_ _I couldn’t sleep  
_ _The anger wouldn’t leave me_  
_As the countless hours passed  
_ _The beating of my heart only gained speed_

it is all bare, all empty, in all directions. and no matter how long hal looks, no matter where he looks, and no matter how loud he calls out, there is nothing. 

hole in the ground. hole in his heart. thinking is painful. the only sound in the dead of the night is his own heartbeat, and it sickens him. 

hal jordan is alone. and that thought makes him weak. it makes him want to drop to his knees and forget about everything. go to sleep forever.

_so much for willpower._

hal looks down at his hands, shaking slightly. and his ring. the ring that could do anything. 

at first, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. he can’t fix things, he can’t fix anything. all he can do is cover up the mess with a bandaid and pretend it’ll go away.

it’s dreamlike, what he makes. green mist surrounds him as he forces himself to walk forward. he’s dizzy, and his father speaks to him.

_do you even remember your father? is this his voice? is that what he looked like? really?_ it’s all too much, all these thoughts running through his head.

_take a look at me now, dad._

_take a look at what, hal? everything you love is gone._

_i think i hate myself._

_goodbye hal, i’ve got a plane to catch._

hal watches as martin leaves and he begs him not to go, not again. but he doesn’t follow after him. he stays frozen in one spot as his childhood hero is ripped apart by flames.

_how many times do you have to watch your father die before you feel numb to it?_

now hal _really_ can’t stand. when he opens his eyes (he didn’t realize he closed them until then), he’s on his hands and knees, looking at the ground. and his mother is there, with a kind smile that almost (almost) distracts him from the disappointed look in her eyes. _be happy with your memories, hal, hold onto your good memories._ what a joke.

hal proceeds to wade through those memories like it’s a thick swamp, feeling delirious. the coast city he constructs is nearly identical, with details that he’s memorized throughout the years. every crooked stop sign, every piece of graffiti on the old abandoned gas station on the road towards his house, and even the fallen tree in front of his old middle school. all destroyed, all recreated. 

night falls, and hal realizes the one thing that has stayed the same. instinct leads his way home. even when the construct fades, when his parents are gone, when the green mist blows away… hal knows the spot in this crater he’s standing in is where his house used to be, just by the alignment of the stars.

he’s spent a lot of his time looking up at those stars.

the gravel between his fingers doesn’t feel real after a while. he sits there long after it falls through his fingers. 

hal realizes the beeping in his ears isn’t part of the drumming in his head. the ring’s charge has depleted, taking away everything with it. once again, hal jordan is truly alone.

“is this all i am?”

_it’s not fair._

“fairness is not the issue, 2814.” says the guardian. it’s just a construct, sent lightyears away from oa. he’s lecturing hal now. 

“you have to understand.” and “i’m trying to fix things.” and “it was all _taken_ from me!” do nothing. it’s all just nonsense words to the oldest beings in the universe. the guardian looks at hal with a clinical expression. like hal’s emotions are a disease.

**it’s not fair.**

something inside of hal snaps; he’s acting all on instinct because every single one of his nerve endings are on fire and never in all his life has he wanted to destroy something as badly as he wanted to destroy oa and the guardians and everything and everyone and it’s not fair, it’s not fair, _it’s not fair._

the construct is gone and sucked into his power ring after hal strangles the life out of it.

well, now they know how their good buddy hal jordan’s facilities have their wires crossed there in that hollow head of his. better get to this.

the thing about the green lantern power rings that everyone forgets is that, depending on the willpower of the wearer, it can really create anything. it’s just a question of how badly the wearer wants it.

_hal can see barry’s smile, and can feel his hope like a broken heart._

“nothing is going to stop me.” hal says, jaw clenched. speaking it out into the open so it comes true. it will come true. because he knows what’s ahead of him now, and he knows that the guardians are going to send everything they’ve got at him. but it _will come true,_ because humans are feisty, and other galaxies know that. because you take a fearless man with a chip on his shoulder, slap a magic ring on him, and he’s the best green lantern the corps ever got.

now, what happens if you take a broken man with nothing left to lose, and dangle the power to make everything right above his head? 

“we’ll see.”

hal used to never understand red lanterns. it made sense on paper, but he could never wrap his head around it. who could be so angry for what they’ve lost that they’d try to destroy what they had left?

he gets it now.

now, when his brothers and sisters fight against him and block his way to oa.

ke’haan. laira.

“i’ve given up everything for the corps, and i’ve never asked for anything in return.”

tomar. jack.

“i wouldn’t expect any of you to understand.”

kreon. hannu. graf.

“i am not letting anyone get in my way.”

boodika.

“if i’m a monster, then you have the guardians to thank for that.”

kilowog.

“...there’s no coming back from this, is there?”

it has taken years for hal to realize that no matter how much he sacrifices, nothing the guardians do, _nothing the corps does,_ will ever make up for it. all the pain, all the suffering. all the physical injury, and the mental damage.

he will never get that back.

he will never get his friends back.

he will never get his home back.

and that fuels him with a rage and a fear and the drive to keep him going, despite everything. 

until he gets to oa, and he sees the last line of defense that the guardians have left.

“hello, jordan.”

hal, scared and heartbroken, looks up at sinestro who emerges from his prison. he’s shaking now, with fear or anger, he doesn’t know. 

all he knows is that he’s going to kill this bitch.

“you’re one of the good guys, jordan.”

_“not right now.”_

and then, hal attacks him. but if there’s anyone who knows hal, it’s sinestro. that thought crawls in his skin and makes him shiver, but it’s true. and sinestro knows his way around words and convinces hal to drop the rings he stole from his former allies.

maybe something deep inside him let them fall because he just _wants_ sinestro to stop him here. maybe all this is getting to him. maybe the weight of his dead friends is proving too much to bear.

but then sinestro goes on about torture, and how the prison in the central battery took away his sense of self. as if he didn’t get the pleasure of hurting and taking away pieces of hal before then. as if the hole he made in hal’s heart doesn’t mean _anything_.

sinestro deserves to die.

and when the constructs fade, they take turns punching and clawing at each other with their bare hands. 

each crack of skin and bone creates waves of echos on the deserted oa, as no one but the guardians watch. 

hal is crying as he’s on top of sinestro, strangling him with all of his strength and weight. tears fall on the man’s face as he’s choking for breath.

“it’s over, it’s over, i win!” hal shouts out over sinestro’s unmoving body. “i won, i finally won!”

hal’s own body nearly collapses there as another sob shakes through him.

and then, he staggers up. feet unsteady for a brief moment. he looks at sinestro, and regards him before turning around for the last time, and making his way toward the central battery.

he hesitates as he looks up at the stupid thing, and feels a large hand on his shoulder.

and takes a blow to his whole damn body.

“i can’t let ya do this, hal!” kilowog says, in tatters but still alive. “you’ve killed too many of us, and more are gonna die if you take the rest of the battery’s power!”

hal’s nerves are still frayed, mind blank, and jaw set.

_i can’t think about this now. i need to set everything right._

kilowog, his oldest friend, beats the everloving shit out of him. he asks hal to stop. he _begs_ hal to stop. please, hal, you have to _stop._

“but i can’t.”

kilowog’s bones lay in a pile of ashes after hal vaporizes him.

_you’ve crossed the line now, jordan._

i just wanted my life back.

_you did this._

and you can’t stop this.

...and neither can i.

hal doesn’t bother to kill the guardians as he walks into the battery. as he absorbs its power, he knows they won’t survive the blast anyway.

...

when hal emerges, he isn’t hal. he’s different. everything feels different; bigger and smaller and infinite. small enough to hold in the palm of his hand and big enough to measure up to the ever growing expanse of the universe. he feels like he can move mountains. he feels like he can flood towns and melt ice caps. 

he feels like he can start this whole universe from scratch.

not-hal steps over the corpses of the guardians to get to the final ring; his own ring he discarded. it looks like it’s about to take off. 

so he crushes it under his foot.

he looks up into space and thinks about his next step.

he thinks about barry. he thinks about hope. is there hope for the universe now that he has the power to mend every mistake ever made?

he looks at the bodies on oa he’s left in his wake.

“this is all i am.”

with all the willpower he has left, parallax takes flight into the emerald twilight.

**Author's Note:**

> this took a while but i'm glad it's done.  
> retelling of emerald twilight and some fun emotional internal dialogue.  
> also: I do not ship sinhal but I still think sinestro is hal's shitty, shitty ex.
> 
> [the song that pairs w this fic](https://blacksquares.bandcamp.com/track/at-the-crown-of-eternal-sunlight)


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